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JANUARY 5TH: HILLINGDON

It's a new year, but it's the same old routine for Arthur. The holidays barely register as a thing for him anymore, and while everything gets a bit cozier and cheesier over the holidays, he's glad for the return to infrequent parties and fewer social expectations. He doesn't have that many friends and family to connect with over the holidays anyway, and it wasn't a good time for him to go home to Chicago for a visit.

So it's no surprise that he can be found in the halls of Hillingdon house in early January as if none of it had ever happened, looking for quick and easy bounties to pick up as he organizes a few supply orders. One day he can be found speaking in a hushed but urgent down into his phone at the end of a hallway.

"Two weeks ago you said you'd have the black ironwood. No, I'm not settling for desert, that's not the same thing. I'm almost out and now I'll have to go to someone else - yes, I'd rather pay a bit more than be dead, thanks. Jesus..."

The conversation continues like this for a minute or two longer until he hangs up with a curse, a look on his face like he misses the old days when one could literally slam the phone down to end a call.

JANUARY 8TH: THE BAR

So the man isn't really one for birthdays. He's never made it a big deal, and it barely even came up in the past few years while he was too busy traveling to realize it had come and gone. Today the plan was no different. He ran his errands this morning, had a business meeting over lunch, stopped in at Hillingdon to check in and see if there were any bounties worth picking up, and finished with a lovely dinner catching up with a couple associates. There were a couple glasses of wine ingested at this dinner, but nothing too over the top, and they don't even know it's his birthday when they part ways and he heads home alone.

On this walk, however, he thinks on it a little bit and feels that something is missing. He is turning 30 after all, and it would be a shame not to mark the occasion. There's a popular bar he's stopped into before on his way home, and tonight he spontaneously decides to have a few drinks. It's barely an hour later, after striking up a pleasant conversation with the bartender and introducing himself to the patrons next to him, that Arthur's grinning widely with flushed cheeks, animated and excited at every topic of conversation that comes his way.

He is, of course, uproariously drunk.

JANUARY 11TH: THE PURGE

Arthur's been watching Daybreak. He's been watching them move throughout Croydon, pushing out the dark magic like this is their divine mission. Arthur's not a huge fan of magic that hurts anyone, but he's also not a fan of Sylvia Redbright's apparent directive to bring peace to the London underground by controlling the whole system.

This, though, this has Norrell written all over it, so Arthur's been tracking one Daybreak witch all morning, watching him come and go and hoping that he'll lead him somewhere useful. It's an odd, perhaps creepy thing to do without any promise of a paycheque at the end, but Arthur's as covert as he can be and he's obnoxiously patient. Currently he's watching this witch speak with a defensive shop owner, from across the street in a small deli, passively hoping that it'll turn into a real fight since he's so unbelievably bored.

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It was always funny, the way Nancy's life was so filled with coincidences. Today was one of them: she'd been out working, and had ducked into a pub to try to pick up another customer before the end of the night, and it just so happened to be the very pub where one Arthur No Lastname was celebrating his birthday. She had only the vaguest idea of his birthday, having once taken a look at his license when she'd gotten the opportunity to look at his wallet (she'd placed it back, without taking anything), but once she saw him in the crowd, drunk as all hell, well. It didn't matter what it was. He looked like he was having fun, and screw it, she could use some fun what with everything that's happening.

She ordered them each a rather large glass of whiskey, and in no time at all is making her way through the crowd to the birthday boy.

"Hullo, you!" She said, sashaying over to Arthur and garnering a few looks from other patrons. She held him the glass. "Bought you a drink." He had no choice but to drink it, because otherwise she'd have it for both of them, and she'd already had enough to drink tonight as it was. "What's got you in such high spirits?" She didn't bother to ask if she could join him and his new friends.

Arthur holds up his hands in recognition when she addresses him, a huge smile on his face. "Nancy!" he says, wrapping one arm around in her in half of a hug as he takes the whiskey. It'll take him a little longer to move on from the excitement of recognizing someone he knows to the realization that his relationship with Nancy still requires boundaries. Boundaries are hard when you're drunk, but Arthur's not the type to wake up with regrets, even when this much alcohol has been had.

"I'm just out celebrating," he explains with a grin, as if what he's celebrating isn't a complete mystery to anyone who isn't family.

Call it a flaring of a latent territorial streak thanks to recent tensions, or maybe stretch it as far as friendship, the point is Eames has a gift for Arthur on this, the day of his birth.

It's the wee hours of the night, when most pubs are closed, when he politely knocks on Arthur's door instead of just letting himself in. (Call it a birthday present.) And he waits patiently.

Arthur doesn't strike him as the celebratory type, but he'll leave if there's no answer within a few minutes. No way is he waiting around for hours just to wish Arthur a happy birthday.

Arthur opens the door with the bewildered, suspicious look of a drunk man who didn't even know anyone had this address, let alone was expecting someone to knock at this type of night. He narrows his eyes at Eames and it seems to talk a full three seconds to achieve recognition, after which he transitions into something that could be immediate regret that this is happening while he's so inebriated. He doesn't generally let contacts see him in such a state, not after building an arm's length working relationship with them, but Arthur eventually comes to the realization that it's too late now and it would be even more rude to just close the door in Eames' face.

By this point the silence since opening the door has been sufficiently awkward. "I, uh..." - what, that's not how you answer the door - "Sorry, did you need something?"

Yeah, much better. Fortunately he's drunk enough that it comes out less rude and more confused.

Eames raises an eyebrow, clearly having not expected Arthur to be drunk, and he has to take a moment to process this state of affairs.

"Did I interrupt your celebration?" He asks once the moment's passed, a note of genuine curiosity colouring his otherwise flagrant disregard for whatever Arthur's up to. He won't stay for long, this is already weird enough. And as such, he doesn't care overmuch about Arthur's night. Arthur's ruined enough of Eames' evenings by now anyway.

"No, no," Arthur says, raising his eyebrows as if the idea of him doing any celebrating at this hour is ridiculous. He looks unsure as to where to go from there, but after a glance up and down the hall he sighs and gestures for Eames to follow, turning around and receding back into the apartment. "Come in."

Indeed, there has not been any celebrating done here. Just a half empty bottle of moderately expensive scotch open on the coffee table, next to a half empty glass of the same stuff and his laptop, open to a few news articles like this is how he does all his research.

"Want a drink?"

She beams as he wraps an arm around her, and she wastes no time in planting a quick kiss on his cheek. She was the affectionate sort, even could be after an evening at work and greeting friends with cheek kisses (even if they left a mark, sorry) was par for the course with Nancy.

She has no idea there are boundaries in place at all, and really, really doesn't care.

"What're you celebrating? I want to know what I bought drinks for." Then it hits her. "Shit- your birthday! How old? Fifty, now?" She tosses her hair back over her shoulders as she jokes with him. "I'm kidding- but it is your birthday, isn't it? I'm remembering right, yeah?"

He grins affectionately down at her, laughing when she jokes about his age. "I'm thirty," he clarifies, as if he could ever be mistaken for fifty. He's not even going grey yet, but he supposes it's all the same to someone as young as her. He tilts his head at her, curious as he drops his arm from around her shoulders and leans against the bar.

"How did you know it was my birthday? I never told anyone here."

"Trade secret," Nancy tells him, tapping the side of her nose.

"Thirty, huh? Well you look good for your age." Excuse you, she is not that young. She feels far older than nineteen, at any rate, and tends to act it. And there's a huge difference between thirty and fifty as far as she is concerned. But she's been with them all.

"Love one," Eames says as he takes a cursory look around. Is Arthur... Drunk and doing research? Surely the man's life can't be this sad. It's like every time he thinks Arthur can't get more bizarrely boring, he discovers some new depth.

Well, whatever. Eames hands him a small gift box with a casual, "happy birthday," in the same tone and manner he uses for general greetings. He half expects Arthur to just put the box aside, but if he does open it he'll find a watch - black leather and gold, very classy and understated. It should fit in neatly with Arthur's wardrobe.

Arthur's too drunk to wonder about trade secrets, but he's got his suspicions all the same. Not that it matters - if he's out something it's been long enough that he must not care about it too much.

Instead he just continues smiling. "I don't know where you think flattery's getting you tonight, but it's not going to work," he says, still with a sense of humour.

"Oh," Arthur says, effectively stopped in his tracks before he can go get Eames a glass. He frowns down at the box, showing just how taken off guard he is by the idea of Eames giving him a gift, but he shakes himself out of that quickly, frowning up at Eames instead.

"I-- thanks, but you didn't have to."

"I know." Eames shrugs, none too fussed about Arthur's reaction - honestly, if he'd expected a gift he likely wouldn't have gotten one, Eames is habitually contrary that way. "It felt appropriate," he continues as he sits, gesturing to the bottle with an amused look. He'd quite like some of that scotch at some point.

she hadn't stolen anything from him. maybe if their original encounter had gone another way. but she didn't steal from people she knew or cared about.

"nowhere! I'm not allowed to complement you?" She tossed her hair over one shoulder. "I can switch to insulting you, if you'd like. you are the birthday boy, after all." She gives him a good natured wink.

Arthur takes a couple seconds to look at the box in his hand, but when Eames calls his attention back to the scotch he shakes his head and goes to get another glass. He fills the glass liberally and then carefully slides it toward Eames before he sits down with a sigh.

"What is it?" he says, holding up the gift. He's not sure if it's appropriate to open it now or wait until Eames leaves or what. This is not something he's done in a while.

"Just open it," is the answer to that question. Given good-naturedly, of course. Eames doesn't care much one way or the other when Arthur opens it, but he's not giving anything away about the contents of the box. That's not how gifts work.

It's no surprise that Faolan can be found in the halls of Hillingdon house in early January himself. For all that he did enjoy himself over the holidays, once they're over it's back to work, both at Hillingdon and with the Night Council. And work it is, especially with these new laws enacted. He's hoping to get as much as he can settled here today -- who knows how quickly this is going to pick up, in the end. Norrell's literal witch hunt.

He's just making his way back from the kitchen towards where he's set himself up with his most recent bout of paperwork when he happens upon Arthur. And Arthur's phone conversation. Which he can't help but overhear part of, as he turns into the hall and happens to be heading right toward him. He tries to act casual, tries to just keep going, but as the conversation ends with a curse, he pauses with one hand cradling his mug of coffee, the other clutching the door handle before him, before he makes a decision that he should probably say something.

"...you alright?" he asks, as casually as he can, glancing up at the other man warily.

Arthur looks up, a bit surprised that Faolan stopped to ask. He had come down this way hoping to avoid anyone hearing him cursing out his supplier after all, but when Faolan came by he wasn't going to spare the man on the other end of the line just for Faolan's sake.

"Oh, yeah, it's just... you wouldn't think it would be this hard to get your hands on some wooden bullets, you know?" he says, still clearly a bit ruffled from the whole thing but trying to shrug it off casually. Other peoples' incompetence really gets to him, you know?

Arthur shakes his head slightly like he's trying to shake of some of the drunkenness, and then he sits back and opens the box with a sigh. He's still confused by the whole turn of events, so that only ramps up when he sees the watch. He takes it out of the box carefully and frowns at it, shaking his head with purpose this time.

"Eames, this is too much."

Judging by the look on Eames' face, 'too much' is clearly not a concept that he understands easily - not in the same way as Arthur, anyway - and he raises his eyebrows at Arthur in confusion. The sort of expression one wears when someone's just spouted total nonsense at them.

"It's a watch." Eames says after a moment, derisively stating the obvious seeing as Arthur seems to think something else of it. He's gotten much more expensive gifts for people he hated, this is basically nothing.

"It's a nice watch," Arthur insists, and the drunkenness is coming into play here. His motions are belligerent compared to how precise he usually is, though to a stranger he could still pass as sober. "It's not something you--" He pauses midsentence, trying to regroup and come at this from a different angle.

"Is this a fae thing? Getting expensive gifts for people you're barely friends with?"

A poorer angle, arguably. He doesn't mean it.

A much poorer angle. It's not that there's any sentimental meaning - a gift for someone who's been helpful, a luck charm for someone whose death would be inconvenient - but Eames looks annoyed nevertheless. He registers that Arthur's clearly not sober, but having a gift rebuffed is not something that sits easy with Eames.

(That's a fae thing, if Arthur's curious.)

His expression settles back into an easy nonchalance after that brief flicker though and he shrugs, gesturing broadly with the hand holding his glass, "if you don't want it, Arthur, I can always take it back."

"No, no," Arthur says, gesturing aggressively. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean it that way, I'm--"

He cracks a smile and even huffs a laugh, which is probably not appropriate given what he's just said, but he can't help himself. "I'm sorry," he says, "I'm ridiculously drunk right now. I like it, I really do. It's just hard to imagine something like this being given without some ulterior motive." His tone is hardly suspicious. It's more like an admission, an explanation. It's true Arthur doesn't feel that they're close enough to warrant a gift this nice, but he's certainly not about to give it back and he would like to know of there are any motives behind it. He's just not being too subtle about it at the moment.

This is... Truly bizarre. He's seen Arthur after a number of drinks plenty of times, but certainly never this easy and relaxed kind of drunk. Eames doesn't know what to do with it; he's used to working around Arthur's self-restraint, the precision he uses to keep his thoughts and feelings to himself, so this openness throws Eames for a loop.

He has no idea how to respond immediately, (something he hides with a sip of his drink,) before he sighs and shakes his head. "The quartz is charmed," Eames confesses, though if that counts as an ulterior motive he has no idea, "just a small luck charm, nothing powerful."

Arthur vaguely wonders whether there is an ulterior motive in there somewhere, but he's too drunk to come to any conclusions just now. He looks down at the watch in his hand with a wry but fond smile.

"Maybe I'll wear it to go buy a lottery ticket tomorrow, then," he says, and that should be enough to indicate that he's not only going to keep it, but he's going to wear it as well.

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the PUB not BAR gosh

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happy birthday nerd

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HILLINGDON

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